Ask Slashdot: How Do You Prepare For The Theft Of Your PC?

A security-conscious Slashdot reader has theft insurance -- but worries whether it covers PC theft. And besides the hassles of recreating every customization after restoring from backups, there's also the issue of keeping personal data private. I currently keep important information on a hidden, encrypted partition so an ordinary thief won't get much off of it, but that is about the extent of my preparation... What would you do? Some sort of beacon to let you know where your stuff is? Remote wipe? Online backup?
There's a couple of issues here -- including privacy, data recovery, deterrence, compensation -- each leading to different ways to answer the question: what can you actually do to prepare for the possibility? So use the comments to share your own experiences. How have you prepared for the theft of your PC?

Comments

Alarm system

[Anonymous Coward]

My alarm system is tied into the reset button on my desktop.

If SWAT kicks in my door, the computer resets my TRUECRYPT protected computer.

My front door is also reinforced and open from the inside out. If SWAT tries to break in my door, I'll have some warning ahead of time.

Re:Password and full image backups

[Bert64]

This...

Insurance will cover the cost of replacing the hardware, backups take care of recovering the data, just make sure the backups don't get stolen/destroyed with the machine.

If the thief can't power the machine on due to a password they will either throw it away, or sell it cheap to someone more capable of dealing with it who will either wipe the data and install fresh or just sell the individual components.

Nothing you can do except encrypt and insure

[cerberusss]

So I was at the receiving end of a burglary last year. The wife woke me up because she heard something. And in some sort of half-sleep/half-awake state, I stormed down and charged at the two guys that were riffling through our possessions.

Thank god I live in Europe so burglars aren't armed or anything. They ran away to the front door and tried to escape. I ran after them and when they were opening the front door, attacked them. At some point during the pushing and shoving, I woke up and thought -- what the fuck do I actually care?

So I said "okay guys, let's stop here. I haven't actually seen your faces and I'm not looking" (I started staring at the floor) "and I don't really care, just take that stuff and go". They took off and I called the cops. They took fingerprints and stuff but never caught them.

They took an iPad, a MacBook and some money. I remote-locked the iPad, and realized I had Prey running on the MacBook. I switched the MacBook to "lost mode" but one year later, it appears they formatted the drive before connecting to the internet. The files on the MacBook weren't encrypted, the iPad was.

Lessons learned:
- I got most of the value back through the insurance
- Install Prey or some other remote locking software stuff
- Don't go and fight burglars, it's not worth it

Re:Nothing you can do except encrypt and insure

[cerberusss]

There are many possible outcomes during and following a home invasion, and invasion experiences are rare. It matters whether his wife feels safe after, in their house or on the street, and nobody knows how they will behave until tested.

Correct there. If you would've asked me in advance how I'd react, I would not in a thousand years have guessed my reaction. But I got into this weird sleep-rage and it took an actual fight to finally snap out of it. It was like someone else was at the wheel, some primal lizard-brain reaction.

Re:backups

[Humbubba]

Lots of options. Here's the important stuff:

Hard Drive Encryption is the best solution, IMHO. There are Self Encrypting Drives (SEDs). Many solid state drives have encryption built in. Sweet. Nothing but fine. You gotta turn it on though. RTFM.

PGP Hard Drive Encryption is great. And there's Bitlocker (Windows) too.

Yes, backups are a very good idea. And backing up to or having your backups at multiple locations (Distributed Architecture), even better. But you gotta plan for updates. Just a thought: sensitive files should be encrypted, period. And if all your secret stuff is already encrypted, do you really need to encrypt your backup?

Online backup services are available too, like Carbonite($). Good rep. Haven't tried 'em.

For a full system image, trust Clonezilla - IFF you get it from the source (http://clonezilla.org/). It's straightforward, but read the docs anyway. There are other options, but I go with what I know. And I know that if you're moving from a Dell(x) to an Asus(y), a full system image might not be what you're looking for.

For small stuff, like documents and files, you might think about copying to a Flash drive. Just a warning: they are notoriously easy to recover deleted files from.

Don't forget to backup your .vimrc, if you're into Vim. I forget every time.